fferent starting-points, but the two "ways of
love" should bring us to the same goal. The possibility of
disinterested love, in the ordinary sense, ought never to have been
called in question. "Love is not love" when it asks for a reward. Nor
is the love of man to God any exception. He who tries to be holy in
order to be happy will assuredly be neither. In the words of the
_Theologia Germanica_, "So long as a man seeketh his own highest good
_because_ it is his, he will never find it." The mystics here are
unanimous, though some, like St. Bernard, doubt whether perfect love
of God can ever be attained, pure and without alloy, while we are in
this life.[12] The controversy between Fenelon and Bossuet on this
subject is well known, and few will deny that Fenelon was mainly in
the right. Certainly he had an easy task in justifying his statements
from the writings of the saints. But we need not trouble ourselves
with the "mystic paradox," that it would be better to be with Christ
in hell than without Him in heaven--a statement which Thomas a Kempis
once wrote and then erased in his manuscript. For wherever Christ is,
there is heaven: nor should we regard eternal happiness as anything
distinct from "a true conjunction of the mind with God.[13]" "God is
not without or above law: He _could_ not make men either sinful or
miserable.[14]" To believe otherwise is to suppose an irrational
universe, the one thing which a rational man cannot believe in.

The mystic, as we have seen, makes it his life's aim to be transformed
into the likeness of Him in whose image he was created.[15] He loves
to figure his path as a ladder reaching from earth to heaven, which
must be climbed step by step. This _scala perfectionis_ is generally
divided into three stages. The first is called the purgative life,
the second the illuminative, while the third, which is really the goal
rather than a part of the journey, is called the unitive life, or
state of perfect contemplation.[16] We find, as we should expect, some
differences in the classification, but this tripartite scheme is
generally accepted.

The steps of the upward path constitute the ethical system, the rule
of life, of the mystics. The first stage, the purgative life, we read
in the _Theologia Germanica_, is brought about by contrition, by
confession, by hearty amendment; and this is the usual language in
treatises intended for monks. But it is really intended to include the
civic and social